Highly accomplished veteran automotive lighting expert Rainer Neumann talked to DVN recently about the market future of today’s light sources offered today on the market.
Rainer said “ We have intensively discussed the global market development of LEDs in front lighting during the last DVN workshops. We all know that in the next years more and more vehicles will offer LED headlamps, not only premium brands. Mid segment vehicles and car makers will come with optional LED technology as in China. The optional costs for the consumer will limit the total volume in this segment”.
He continues about the main drivers for adaptation of LED across car segments and regions: “The LED light source is generally accepted in the auto industry as the light source of the future. Energy consumption, reliability, CO 2 are main reasons. Styling supports this. For the premium brands we are seeing individual solutions which creates styling differentiation with high cost solutions. This will remain for a while. For medium segment and smaller electrical vehicles the driver will be the development of modules, which drives the cost and workload down. Emerging market is starting with DRL when looking for LEDs. Here, a good opportunity for improved lighting is the 25W HID solution. In China, there are first programs coming.
Neumann emphasizes another point: “We do see a need of more engineers per program as long as we have to develop individual solutions. When applying LED the customer is expecting individual solutions. Also with affordable concepts like Visteon has developed!
This will change in a long term, when LEDs become a standard!
Today we are struggling with the assembly of such headlamps using a big number of parts and thus makes it difficult to achieve high volume production with reasonable costs. Here the module concept could be a solution in the future.
Also the small electric vehicles will more concentrate on energy, packaging, weight, and functionality than styling. Here we can find the best market for high volume solutions based on modules with LEDs.”
Neumann will make a presentation next month at the DVN Tokyo workshop.
